He was the son of a farmer, a handyman and teacher at Cretin High School — and now, he’s one step away from being canonized a saint. Brother James Miller’s feast day is Feb. 13, and the Church in the Archdiocese of St. Paul has been given Vatican permission to observe it locally.

That means that prayers particular to Brother Miller can be added to Masses celebrated that day, and clergy may wear red liturgical vestments, signifying Brother Miller’s martyrdom.

Feb. 13 is the anniversary of the day in 1982, when the 37-year-old La Sallian Christian Brother was shot several times in broad daylight by hooded men while he was on a ladder making repairs outside a school in Guatemala where he taught. Friends presume that he had angered Guatemalan officials through his support of education for indigenous boys, and his efforts to prevent his students from joining the military. His killers were never identified or prosecuted.

Before going to Guatemala, “Hermano Santiago” worked at then-Cretin High School in St. Paul from 1966-1971 and again from 1979-1980. He taught Spanish, founded the soccer team and supervised maintenance at the all-boys school. Ahead of his beatification in 2019, the school — now Cretin-Derham High School following a 1987 merger with a local girls’ Catholic school — commissioned a bronze bust of their former teacher for the school’s courtyard. This year, the school is turning a focus on his life and work with special events in the week leading up to Feb. 13, which corresponds with its annual Justice Week.

Cretin-Derham Hall also just installed a reliquary that includes relics from Brother Miller and two others: St. John Baptist de La Salle, founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, and St. Miguel Febres Cordero, a Christian Brother in Ecuador who died in 1910. The relic from Blessed Miller is a lock of his hair.

In a Feb. 10 blog post about Blessed Miller, Lou Anne Tighe, Cretin-Derham Hall campus minister, noted that the school’s students learn about the former teacher and see his portrait. “Blessed James’ story weaves deeply through the tapestry of narrative and legacy at Cretin-Derham Hall,” she wrote. “He was a teacher, a steward of the earth, and an incredible handyman. The fall soccer season is an annual reminder that he started the program in the late 1960s. There was and is no separation between labor and the love of God and neighbor. … Through the life of the Blessed, we discover a universal call to love.”

Last May, Archbishop Bernard Hebda made a request to the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments that the liturgical celebration of Blessed Miller, martyr, be inserted into the local Church’s liturgical calendar. He received the permission in June for it to be included as an “optional memorial,” meaning priests can commemorate him in Mass Feb. 13.

The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments provided two texts to be used to commemorate the saint: the Collect, a prayer at the beginning of Mass, and the second reading for the Liturgy of the Hours. The Collect notably refers to Blessed Miller as a “wise teacher of the youth.”

It reads in full: “O God, who, on account of the wonderful confession of your holy name, bestowed the glory of martyrdom on that wise teacher of the youth, Blessed James Alfred Miller, grant, we pray, that by his intercession we may remain firm in professing the faith unto death. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever.”

For insertion into the Liturgy of the Hours, the congregation provided a brief biography of Brother Miller, a reflection on martyrdom from a 2001 homily given by St. John Paul II, a responsory verse from the Book of Revelation, and a prayer asking for Brother Miller’s intercession.

That a man who is now formally beatified by the Church lived in the Twin Cities should inspire local Catholics, said Father Tom Margevicius, archdiocesan director of worship.

“The more personal and intimate the connection between a holy person and you and me, the more useful we find (that) for our faith life,” he said. “The fact that this guy was at Cretin High School, that’s pretty close! … There may be saints among us, and we don’t even know it.”

Prior to the Vatican approval, it would have been appropriate for individual Catholics to celebrate his feast day, but now it’s a celebration for the local Church, he said. He said that in addition to attending Mass, Catholics might consider praying the special Collect or Liturgy of the Hours prayers at home to mark the day. Both are available in several languages on the Sacraments and Worship page at archspm.org.